Came up for air too soon tonight, and got the theatrical version of the bends.
…See…because artists like to filter shit.
When the world gets too real, or horrid…or just really horrid, we feel the need to escape and throw it up immediately to get it out of our systems.
Like cheap therapy.
…So we will often think, (in total error, with sometimes devastating circumstances), that instead of actually facing a thing as it stands, we should chew on it a couple times and spew it out of some artistic orifice…frequently having nothing at all to do with the initial problem, and think we can just call it a day.
…Lose your job? Knit everyone you know a Christmas sweater.
…Bad break up? Volunteer to throw a wedding shower for a friend.
…Someone you love dies? Audition three days later, for a comedy.
…You know…things like that.
Now, sometimes this actually works in your favor. And on a freakish percentage of time, it goes big. Which is when you get things like Salvador Dali, Stephen Hawking, and Adele. But by and large…this is mostly art which should be practiced privately. Somewhere where it is totally excusable to look like a junkyard, with reactivated adolescent achne, unable to focus whatsoever, or bathe yourself.
….Mostly to avoid total and complete humiliation, when rejoining the functioning world once again.
Self preservation.
…But then, sometimes…for obvious reasons…our reasoning really blows in these times of emotional artistic horror…and we bite off more than we can chew. We think things like:
“I’m going to keep my callback appointment to that comedy after what happened three days ago…cuz I need to get out of my head where I’ve been wallowing without sleep or correct motor function, for days. It’ll be like a four hour break from being me. I’ll just filter the crap into that.”
(P.S. Artists can be woefully blind to their limits from time to time, with disastrous consequences.)
Needless to say, it didn’t go well.
…My worst attempt at filtering emotion or life-crap, EVER.
…Worse than the time I egregiously took up writing poetry for an afternoon, to prove to myself I could go legit instead of just blog.
…Or when I thought I’d get over my writer’s block by trying a serious portrait, after sketching nothing at all, for over ten years.
…Worse, even, than the time I thought I’d beat the, “thirty curse” nonsense, by getting totally wasted on five kinds of alcohol like a pro, the day before tech, ending up with my first (and to date) worst hangover ever.
…A new, embarrassing total low.
Bad reading. Bad choices. Bad showing.
…100% effort, severely handicapped, to about 12% performance capability. My own fault. Entirely. Nothing whatever to blame on any other field.
…I’d learned the lesson already, forty times last year. Why the hell didn’t I retain it?
Comedy is really fucking hard.
…It’s hard when you are running on all cylinders, at full power. More so, when perturbed, stressed or anxious.
…Impossible, when making stupid choices, and all you can think in your head when you sit down afterward is:
“He would have nailed that monolog. It was just the kind of story he told best…”
…And then you realize, you just put him in the past-tense.
…And you sort of want to vomit.
~D
